Halfmoon Bay
Halfmoon Bay runs from Sargeant Bay to Wood Bay, and one house in four has nobody living in it. South of Pender Harbour, no part of the Coast is empty as often.
Halfmoon Bay is spread along Redrooffs Road and the highway from Sargeant Bay to Wood Bay: Welcome Woods, the village by the pier, Secret Cove, Middlepoint. A local columnist put the count plainly in 2021: "It is estimated half the houses here are summer residences." The census is more conservative — 489 of 1,859 dwellings, one in four, had nobody living in them — but either way, this is the part of the Coast south of Pender Harbour where the most houses are empty the most of the time.
Two things reach those houses when nobody is there. Wind, and fire.
4 November 2024
Late in the morning of 4 November 2024, with no weather warning in effect for the Sunshine Coast, a tornado came ashore in Halfmoon Bay. Western University's tornado project later confirmed it: 115 km/h, a track of 700 metres, EF-0. A man at his office on Beau Road watched it: "it was taking the tops off all the trees ... slammed the trees down like an excavator ... just really nailed into that, like, two, three block radius." Afterwards he went and knocked on the doors of the houses that trees had landed on.
The wider windstorm did the rest. By early afternoon the fire chief reported "no way to access Pender Harbour or Halfmoon Bay from Sechelt (or vice versa)": Highway 101 was closed at Redrooffs and Redrooffs itself was blocked. Sechelt Fire called it "a big hot mess." Telus warned of "another day or two of bad cell service due to downed repeaters." A restoration firm attended close to 20 homes struck by trees in 24 hours — "the most calls for fallen trees they'd received" — with broken trusses, destroyed roofs and one possible tear-down. Its manager's assessment: "Older buildings, cabins, things like that, they can't take the same type of hit."
Most of Halfmoon Bay was still without power at eight the next evening. Halfmoon Bay Elementary closed for lack of "electricity, heat, phones, and internet." The regional district's alert system was never activated. A resident with a generator said her neighbours, "in the Halfmoon Bay area all their lives," had "never seen anything like this."
A summer house that took a tree through the roof on 4 November 2024 and had no one to check it did not have that damage found until the owner's next visit. Rain came in for however long that was.
The fires above Secret Cove
In 2025 there were four wildfires on the forest service road above the highway between Secret Cove and Madeira Park. The first, in mid-June near Homesite Creek, was small. The second, on 16 July, was declared out of control before crews held it at just under a hectare. The fourth, on 13 September on the Wood Bay road, grew to 6.3 hectares in a day and was "suspected to have been caused by humans"; it took four crews, a helicopter and five days to bring under control. The BC Wildfire Service described the ground: "dense forest, which can complicate ground access."
On 19 June 2026 a logging contractor spotted a fire at 5:20 in the morning above Halfmoon Bay, off the road at the end of Mason Road. It reached a hectare and was held by noon with three crews, three helicopters and three excavators.
None of these reached houses. None came with an evacuation alert. Every one of them started within a few kilometres of Welcome Woods, Secret Cove and Redrooffs, on a road with one way out. The regional district's Area A director says of the whole Coast:
We don't live beside a forest, we live in a forest.
Leonard Lee, SCRD Area A director, February 2026
Who comes when something goes wrong
The Halfmoon Bay fire department has 32 volunteer members and a paid chief. Its second hall, on Fawn Road in Welcome Woods, is "a converted garage structure ... nearing end of useful life." The Sechelt fire chief has explained why his department automatically responds to Halfmoon Bay calls during the day: "a lot of Halfmoon Bay volunteers live outside of the area." In 2026 the regional district's fire flow study listed "severe deficiencies" in water supply around Halfmoon Bay Elementary as a priority.
On 13 January 2024 a house on Backhouse Road, near the Secret Cove resort, caught fire on a Saturday afternoon. Fifteen Halfmoon Bay firefighters and a Sechelt crew attended. The structure was destroyed. The chief said "the weather wasn't on their side."
The RCMP detachment is in Sechelt, sixteen kilometres from the Halfmoon Bay hall.
Redrooffs, and the days the highway closes
When Highway 101 closes at Halfmoon Bay, Redrooffs Road is the only detour, and when Redrooffs is blocked too there is nothing. On 24 August 2025 a crash at the south Redrooffs entrance closed the highway for more than six hours. More than a hundred people were stuck in their cars in 30-degree heat until locals led them out through the logging roads behind Trout Lake. The regional district had no operational role and was not called. On 26 December 2025 a tree brought hydro lines down on the highway at Trout Lake; Redrooffs was the detour again. In November 2021 Redrooffs itself washed out at Kenyon Creek, and the water main in Welcome Woods failed with it — 200 homes on a boil-water advisory for five days.
What gets taken
A boat and trailer from the 8600 block of Redrooffs Road in October 2021. Community mailboxes at Leaning Tree and Belair in January 2022. In October 2023 a construction trailer full of tools was taken from a Halfmoon Bay house that "had also been broken into multiple times"; police asked for camera footage from Westwood, Wildwood, Eureka and Redrooffs between three and five in the morning. In September 2024 a neighbour heard a saw cutting metal at five in the morning and watched a boat trailer leave; it was worth about $15,000 and the man charged was "known to police." A Halfmoon Bay resident wrote to the paper in 2024 comparing Welcome Woods to the suburb he had left in South Africa and urging neighbours to organise a watch.
What a check in Halfmoon Bay covers
Every visit follows the same list and produces the same photographed record:
- After any wind: the roof, the trees over the house and the line, the deck, the dock if you have one
- Doors, windows, sheds, boats, trailers, generators — locked and where you left them
- Heat on and holding; no smell of gas, smoke or damp
- Water: taps, hot-water tank, floors, ceilings; the pump if you are on a well
- Gutters and downspouts; needles and moss; the driveway culvert
- Anything that shows a house is empty: mail, flyers, an unmoved car
- In fire season: dry brush against the house, wood piles against walls, needles in gutters — what FireSmart asks for
- After a storm or a closure: an extra visit as soon as Redrooffs or the highway is open
Most home insurance policies require an empty house to be checked at set intervals during the heating season — often within four days — by a "competent person," or the water shut off and drained. The dated, photographed record from each visit is what the insurer asks for. Some insurers now reduce premiums for FireSmart-assessed properties; the regional district does the assessments free.
What it costs
A scheduled check is $55 a visit, plus $10 travel. The travel charge is the same everywhere between Gibsons and Egmont. There is no minimum term and no joining fee. See the full price list.
Where these facts come from
Every figure, date and quotation on this page was taken from one of these. They are listed so you can read them yourself.
- Coast Reporter, 17 September 2021 — Halfmoon Happenings, and the estimate that half the houses are summer residences
- Statistics Canada, 2021 Census — Sunshine Coast B, dwellings occupied by usual residents
- Coast Reporter, 7 November 2024 — the tornado confirmed, and the account from Beau Road
- Coast Reporter, 4 November 2024 — the storm road closures, and the fire chief on access
- Coast Reporter, 7 November 2024 — the windstorm recap, the restoration firm on tree damage, and the alert system
- Coast Reporter, 18 September 2025 — the Wood Bay wildfire and the 2025 fires above Secret Cove
- Coast Reporter, 19 June 2026 — the one-hectare fire off Mason Road
- Coast Reporter, February 2026 — FireSmart funding, insurance reductions, and the quotation above
- Sunshine Coast Regional District — Halfmoon Bay Volunteer Fire Department
- Coast Reporter, January 2024 — the Backhouse Road house fire
- Coast Reporter, August 2025 — the six-hour highway closure and the way out through the logging roads
- Coast Reporter, October 2023 — the stolen construction trailer and the repeated break-ins
Checked 11 September 2026. Newspaper and government pages do move. If a link no longer works, tell us and we will find where it went.